Social Status and Function
Gaelscoileanna have acquired a reputation for providing excellent academic results at a moderate cost. They have been described as a system of “positive social selection,” giving better than average access to tertiary education and the social and employment opportunities which follow. An analysis of “feeder” schools which send students on to tertiary level institutions shows that 22% of Irish-medium schools send all their students on to tertiary level, compared to 7% of English-medium schools.
It has been argued that the bilingualism resulting from early acquisition of another language is of general intellectual benefit and helps children to learn a third or fourth language. Irish advocates of the immersion approach sometimes refer to studies showing that bilingual children have advantages over monoglot children in other subjects.
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Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.”
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